Print the Legend: The Official Death of Osama bin Laden

The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man with no respect for it. It is not a thing to be thrown about loosely, like small change; it is something to be cherished and hoarded and disbursed only when absolutely necessary. The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in Hell

 H. L. Mencken

I would have to say that in my opinion the greatest thing about the officially announced death of our very own Emanuel Goldstein, Osama bin Laden is the sheer joy of watching the Republicans having to eat their own shit. There is something wonderful about the super-sized helping of humble pie served up with one of those nice little toothpick American flaggie things planted in the middle of their slab now that the rotten fascist fifth columnists and neocons have been robbed of the most kick ass club in the bag, their shameless exploitation of the ‘terrorist’ attacks of 9/11/01 for political gain. The GOP has utterly terrorized the rubes, suckers and suburban Sally soccer moms for nearly a decade now, fundamentally altering the country in the process. You can bet the house on it that the fear and terror cards along with the inevitable Obama is a secret Muslim who along with buddies Bill Ayers and Louis Farrakhan attended wild drug fueled orgies where satanic ritual sacrifices were held were key components of their 2012 strategy. Remember the wild rumors about Hillary's secret lesbian trysts in the White House and the Christmas tree adorned with crackpipes and dildos? That one was a children's bedtime story compared to the volcanic eruption of lies, filth and toxic spew that the Koch Brothers money was funding this time around. The narratives were already well under way and likely were very costly, direct mailings, whisper campaigns, retainers for think tank scum like Dinesh D'Souza and his ilk for their libelous bulk purchased books all are going to have to be scrapped because in  less than a week it is all gone, it went up like a bag of flaming dogshit. To all those who have been justifiably revolted by this all too predictable heinous tactic of assassination though black propaganda and a corrupt media that amplifies and disseminates it just enjoy the sweet schadenfreude along with a side of delicious irony. 

Bin Laden is dead! The release of this week's latest edition of Time Magazine, the official 'news' magazine for the establishment with the evil one's stock picture with the traditional red X though it ensures that despite the caterwauling of the squealing little swine birthers, degenerate America hating pigs like Orly Taitz, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the neocon propagandists the official account is now locked down by the impenetrable firewall of conventional wisdom. Sure they can warble about having to see the pictures like the hilariously desperate Sarah Palin (perhaps she can finagle some sort of trade bartering beaver shots of Bristol for the pics of the now dead bin Laden) who still doesn't understand that her political career is over and that she is well into her next phase of being a gross parody of herself, not that she wasn't always a parody from the git go. Yes, they are going totally batshit over in the big carnival tent of the Republican party, barker in chief Donald T.Rump can now focus on selling tickets to the feces eating contest in the geek section. It is astonishing to behold, the party of shoot first ask questions later is bemoaning the capping of the unarmed uber terrorist and in what is the most hilarious thing of all the corporate media is now suddenly concerned about international law and did the execution of Osama violate it. Hell, that one is hilarious, nearly spit coffee on the keyboard when I read that. Just where in the fuck was the corporate media and the concern for international law when George W. Bush launched his illegal wars, bombed the shit out of civilians, presided over a vile and sadistic regime that made torture an official U.S. policy or for that matter when Obama continued to endorse predator drone strikes on civilian weddings? Double standards and it shows just how rotten to the core that the consolidated and interlocking media in this country has become. Oh, and now here's a real knee-slapper, the Republican whiners, continuing with their well-established culture of victimhood are pissy that none of the credit for taking out bin Laden is being given to Dubya or to his immoral and illegal torture programs. But at least it's consistent since they never saw fit that there should have been any of the blame  assigned to him despite the damned inconvenient fact that the 9/11 events occurred during his watch. Perhaps there can be a commemorative edition of My Pet Goat issued in order to honor Bush for his heroism on that morning. 

God Dammit, they cut into Celebrity Apprentice!

It is pretty obvious that the story of bin Laden's assassination by Seal Team 6 is the official story of the state and it is already being reinforced with the same type of groupthink promulgated by the corporate media that followed the original attacks. While the release of any actual photos of the body have been nixed by Obama on the grounds of national security the government has released bin Laden home videos that are making their way about the internet and media megaphones today. The post death storyline goes to great lengths to play down the mythic capacity of the man once built up to be the baddest motherfucker in the valley of the shadow of death. There have been stories describing bin Laden as "unkempt", "bored", "shabby", "frail" and "weary". There have been stories on the contents of his medicine cabinet, did he have eczema or some other skin condition? Was he using a form of Viagra? Xanax? Interestingly enough nothing seems to have been found that would indicate treatments for kidney failure. The official propaganda gains new layers by the day, this from an article in Time's Special Report issue:

Living the Good Live


So he wasn't in a cave after all. Osama bin Laden, master marketer of mass murder, loved to traffic in the image of the ascetic warrior-prophet. In one of his most famous videotapes, he chose gray rocks for a background, a rough camo jacket for a costume and a rifle for a prop. He portrayed a hard, pure alternative to the decadent weakness of the modern world. Soft Westerners and their corrupt puppet princes reclined in luxury and sin while he wanted nothing but a gun and a prayer rug. The zealot travels light, his bloodred thoughts so pure that even stones are as cushions for his troubled sleep.


Now we know otherwise. Bin Laden was not the stoic soldier that he played onscreen. The exiled son of a Saudi construction mogul was living in a million-dollar home in a wealthy town nestled among green hills. He apparently slept in a king-size bed with a much younger wife. He had satellite TV. This, most of all, was fitting, because no matter how many hours he spent talking nostalgically of the 12th century and the glory of the islamic caliphate, bin laden was a master of the 21st century image machine.

The deconstruction of the uber-fiend, peddled for years, most relentlessly by the insidious Bush regime to hold political power and justify their wars and associated criminality was well under way. The Republican party owned 9/11, wielded it as a trusty bludgeon and used it without mercy as they eviscerated the United States Constitution, turned torture into the guiding principle of national policy, looted the treasury and doled out ever more lucrative contracts to mercenaries and private war profiteers on the taxpayer dime. Whenever it was questioned one of those timely bin Laden videos or tapes just happened to pop up, up went the color-coded terror alert and the nuisance of having to come up with answers went away. For example when Osama bin Laden just happened to pop up on a video four days or so before the 2004 elections it provided a ringing endorsement for the terrorism of Bush and Cheney and with a bit of help in Ohio courtesy of Karl Rove's election stealing machine the king was coronated anew for four more years of hell. The Republicans seized bin Laden and along with him the mythic menace of the destroyer of worlds, it was as though George W. Bush had pulled the magical sword Excalibur from the stone of the smoking rubble of the World Trade Center and the use of the tragedy for political expedience was already official policy while the rotting flesh of the victims still hung heavy in the lower Manhattan air.

Later in the Time piece there is this:

No Hollywood filmmaker ever staged a more terrifying spectacle than 9/11, which bin Laden conjured from a few box cutters and 19 misguided martyrs. When the Twin Towers collapsed, he became the real-life answer to the ruthless, stateless and seemingly unstoppable villains of James Bond fantasy. It was necessary then, to find him and render him mortal again, reduce him to mere humanity - not just as a matter of justice but as a matter of self-defense. 

And it has been done, Barack Hussein Obama has stolen away the mighty sword while at the same time the Mighty Wurlitzer of the pocket media not only ensures that the truth of the death of the evil one will be that of the official story of the state but that the original dogma of the attacks themselves would be reinforced for all time. With the establishment of the official historical account (which as the maxim goes, written by the victors and sanitized to omit the dirt) not only does the questioning of any part of the 9/11 story become intolerable by bin Laden himself is being body scrubbed with his past CIA association being denied by think tank hacks like Peter Bergen in his prominent WaPo piece entitled Five Myths about Osama bin Laden. The usual gaggle of reliable neocon stooges like Charles Kraüthammer patting themselves on the back while trumpeting the great success of the phony war on terror, the sadists and authoritarian freaks on the right-wing decrying any criticism of torture, in Time's case making apologies for the ugly Americans celebrating the demise of the bogeyman with their idiot "USA,USA,USA" chants and viciously cracking down on those who happen to wander off the star spangled lemming farm. Take for example Pittsburgh Steelers running back whose most recent claim to fame was a key fumble during the Super Bowl that pretty much sealed his team's doom. Both barrels were turned on Mendenhall this week for his daring to use TWITter to weigh in on the orgy of glee during the national barbecuing of bin Laden's ass - "those of you who said you want to see Bin Laden burn in hell and piss on his ashes, I ask how would God feel about your heart?... What kind of person celebrates death?". For this the man was descended upon as if by a biblical plague of flesh-eating bats by the pocket media kingmakers, flag-sucking drones and assorted other imbecilic dwellers of the most befouled gutters of the mind. Were this a more primitive (or in our case futuristic) society, Mendenhall would have been quickly an ruthlessly hunted down, his tongue ripped out with fire heated iron tongs and his wayward fingers chopped off so as to never again engage in such heresy as well as to sent an example for others. 

We have been here before, any dissent from the Bush administration's blatant usage of the 9/11 event for reasons of politics and settling an old score with Saddam Hussein were affixed with the scarlet letters of traitor and anti-American. This is just the reverse form of the same primitive defense of the official religions. When it comes to doubts about the ceremonies, false idols and totems any who dare to utter the blasphemies must be dealt with summarily and with extreme prejudice. Any really serious examination of the scaly underbelly of the angry beast with millions of electronic eyes that is the Homeland in the new American century must be taken with a familiarity of the allegory of Plato's cave. Once you have been outside don't even bother to venture back to try to enlighten the other slaves for ye shalt be damned for your efforts if not drawn and quartered by a team of Clydesdales. 

Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared.

- Colonel Walter E. Kurtz

Maybe the real truth of the bin Laden story is that his former sponsors and associates within the American establishment finally just wanted to write the end to his story, tie up that last loose end because to do anything else would ensure a demise, sucked under in the quicksand bog of the wars without end. Obviously spooked by the recent Standard and Poor downgrade of the U.S. debt perhaps it was just an acknowledgement of that which is obvious in that the wars, especially the bottomless money pit in Afghanistan are destroying the country in ways that bin Laden or any other foreign enemy ever could. The bin Laden execution brings to mind the scene from the classic film Apocalypse Now when finally reaching the river's end Captain Willard is delivered to the compound of Colonel Kurtz who had gone rogue and was as a result marked for death by his own country's military leadership in order to terminate his command:

Kurtz: Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command?

Willard: I was sent on a classified mission, sir.

Kurtz: It's no longer classified, is it? What did they tell you?

Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.

Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?

Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir.

Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?

Willard: I'm a soldier.

Kurtz: You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.

Osama bin Laden was never going to stand trial, not in this Empire, not with what he knew. Despite the best efforts of the professional propagandists and spin doctors to downplay his longtime involvement as a valuable instrument of U.S. policy, most notably with the Mujahadeen in the proxy war against the Soviets back in the Reagan years in Afghanistan. What is now existent in popular culture as a noble effort, Charlie Wilson's War for example with the all-American Tom Hanks playing the flamboyant Texan Republican who used his seat in the U.S. Congress to promote arming Islamic radicals, a Reagan pet project right up there with letting good ole Ollie North run guns and drugs to fund arming the Latin American death squads. Were bin Laden to have a forum the potential revealing of such a duplicitous history could prove to be immensely embarrassing and in our sugar-coated, sanitized and flag-draped narrative we couldn't possibly admit to colluding with criminals, dictators, Nazi war criminals or Muslim fanatics in order to further an agenda largely dictated by corporations and plutocrats. Best to just send in the hit squad and be done with it, if that's what actually happened. 

Media analyst Danny Schecter puts it well in his piece Nailing Osama Bin Laden: Was it a military or amedia operation? Why now?

They could have captured him, but that would lead to the hassle of putting him on trial. Besides, what if he revealed his long connection with the CIA and US officials? Can't have that. So the kill order was given, along with a quick disposal of the body, mafia-style (as in “sleeping with the fishes)."

But we will never really know will we?

I have always personally believed that he was dead, at least since shortly after the towers fell and I have never been convinced that he played anything more than an ancillary role in the 9/11 attacks. The attacks as they occurred couldn’t have been carried out by anything less than a multi-national alliance of serious and I mean stone cold professional military personnel, intelligence pros, mole networks largely compartmentalized to provide plausible denial and government officials with the clout to influence both the behind the scenes preparatory work as well as the following cover-up. The weakest part of the entire story to me has always been Osama bin Laden and his flight-simulator trained Islamic fundamentalist fanatics like Mohammad Atta, Ninjas with box-cutters who could overwhelm a multi-trillion dollar intelligence colossus, circumvent the entire national air defense command, dupe U.S. allies and their intelligence services and then pull off with crackerjack precision three daredevil direct hits on U.S. buildings with such damage being done to the structures as to defy the basic laws of physics. Americans are stupid though and swallowed it all, rolled over and gave up their rights and begged for more tyrannical enslavement as their tax dollars were funneled to private military contractors (mercenaries) and private   intelligence firms operating with impunity, zero oversight and no loyalty except to the bottom line. Maybe in the movies Bruce Willis can assemble a crew of losers, party freaks, misunderstood geniuses and hard-assed oil patch roughnecks who could be trained by NASA in less than two weeks to go into space and destroy a killer asteroid but this is reality and when something smells like bullshit there is a 99.9 % chance that it IS bullshit.

The entire official story of 9/11 is one big lie but it is now a lie that like the assassination of President Kennedy will live on while any naysayers will be stigmatized and ghettoized in the predictable manner that "conspiracy theorists" are always treated by a corrupt state seeking to keep its skeletons in the closet with the doors nailed shut. What is now occurring is the death of the 9/11 Truth Movement, as the national wound that was ripped open on that Tuesday morning in 2001 begins to scab over there will be no tolerance for those who continue to pick at it. Already in the days after the big announcement there is a real chill in the air and the establishment is in all likelihood implement the Cass Sunstein plan to "cognitively infiltrate" groups that question the official government fairy tale of 9/11. Personalities who had previously done much good work in investigating 9/11, for example alternative media firebrand Alex Jones has essentially discredited himself through his willingness to feast upon the fruit of the poisoned tree that was the finally and hopefully permanently discredited Birther movement (which smelled like an Israeli black propaganda campaign from the get go) and as a result of this been immersed in a vat of horseshit. While playing fast and loose with themes friendly to the Council For National Policy like global warming denial and pandering to bigots for ratings by demonizing Meskins any of Jones' skepticism at the serendipitous death of bin Laden is easily mocked despite the legitimacy of such questions. There are others as well calling bullshit on the bin Laden murder and they will surely face immense difficulty and much scorn in pursuing this line of skepticism. My personal advice is that it just isn't worth it, there are too many other areas that are in more need of serious attention than wailing away at the tar baby that is Osama bin Laden. Again, where is the body? Why the changes of story? Why now? I defer to recent work by Paul Craig Roberts The Agendas Behind the bin Laden News Event and Russ Baker More Questions on bin Laden for provocative reading and unlike Alex Jones they have not self-immolated. 

This may sound like a cop out but as far as I am concerned an official admission that the man is dead works fine for me, whether it happened last weekend or nine years ago is at this point moot to me. In the end what is most important is that we are able to exit the bizarre, down the rabbit hole because it just may end up being a grave, parallel universe that we were catapulted into when the planes hit the building on September 11, 2001. That will have to suffice right now for nothing will ever have even the remotest chance of returning to a state of semi-normality or what is going to pass for that unless we are able to get some closure and an escape from the neocon Republican fear mongering that has mired us in unwinnable, bankrupting and immoral wars of occupation based on lies. Barring a real investigation into the 9/11 attacks, which by the way is NEVER going to happen, I personally think that it is best to just accept the official story of Osama bin Laden’s death as it has been put forth by the state and it’s organs. Face it, the story may have that now familiar rottenness about it but it’s just time to move on beyond the horrors of the last decade. 

I recall that one great line from the famous western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance :

“when the legend becomes fact, print the legend”

So it goes....

All Hail General Petraeus!

That the great American General David Petraeus is an five-star bullshit artist comes as so real revelation to those of us who have been watching him operate for years. The SURGE was the most successful piece of propaganda in modern American history, turning a brutal and costly sucking-black hole of blood and chaos in Iraq into a golden-hued triumph and then gone flickering into the recesses of the collective American mindset as they turned their channels. The SURGE was so brilliant that Helicopter Ben Bernanke used a similar strategy in pimping a devastated economy, ruined by degenerate Wall Street gamblers and on permanant taxpayer life-support into the near miraculous GREEN SHOOTS of recovery. Well, nearly two years after Chairman Ben's vaunted 60 Minutes infomercial the economy is still in ruins, inflation is skyrocketing and food costs driven into the proverbial stratosphere are rapidly destabilizing the globe. So when I read the recent Rolling Stone piece by Michael Hastings entitled King David's War I was not one bit fazed when it was revealed that the man on the white horse was utilizing propaganda and perception management to keep his war in Afghanistan in it's rightful place in the line at for funding priorities. Only in America could a country that is unravelling as quickly as this one is, infrastructure crumbling, jobs fleeing to cheap labor Meccas, a failed political system and a crusing debt to China could such ruinous wars of choice continue to drain the nation's coffers.

Despite the legend erected around him by Republican syscophants like the McCain-Lieberman-Graham three-headed monster and his own oversized ego and crackerjack public relations team Petraeus has always been less miracle worker than he is a product. The high water mark for King David came in early 2009 when he goose-stepped out to the middle of the NFL logo in full dress regalia to flip the coin at Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa. A national television audience, a massive display of militarism with the thundering flyover barely drowning out the roar of the crowd for the American Caesar (or General James Mattoon Scott) and the loving adoration of a nation braying for the blood of brown skinned Muslim devils reveled in the near orgasmic release of energy of that moment. Petraeus was also riding high after the SURGE PR campaign that convinced millions that their hero had finally won the Iraq war and brought some degree of revenge for that damned Saddam Hussein's support of the 9/11 'terrorist' attacks. Petraeus was in another of those cheap, warmed over versions of real American history honored like the second coming of Eisenhower, a welcome comparison for a man with long-term political aspirations. Only a few years ago, he had been dissed in an ugly public manner by his former boss Admiral William Fallon as an "ass-kissing little chickenshit". Fallon of course paid the price for his candor, being sent packing by the Bushreich high-command, the final straw being an interview that he did for Esquire magazine back in 2008.

The legend of General Petraeus continued to grow in stature with the successful SURGE that has been touted by every self-interested politically connected asshole in order to present the illusion of not being defeated in Iraq because as Christ knows, America WINS wars. Or at least America WINS wars when the war effort isn't being undermined at home by a liberal fifth column, a Commie liberal media and dope-smoking draft dodgers, long-haired stinky hippies and black militants rioting on the nation's cities, so the myth goes. The war machine DID learn one hugely important lesson from the Vietnam debacle and that it was imperative that the perception of the public had to be managed in order to gin up support for future imperialist ventures. With the reinstatement of the draft being political suicide in that it would immediately result in a mass antiwar movement when hundreds of thousands could be plucked from their living room sofas and transported into a real live war zone and therefore being out of the question the public had to be convinced to support or even better forget about ongoing military occupations to plunder on behalf of corporations. Reagan hit paydirt with the Blitzkrieg of global military power Grenada, Poppy Bush kicked ass on former CIA asset and big time narcotics trafficker Manuel Noriega and the first Gulf War was a spectacular masterpiece of stage managed propaganda brought into the living rooms of millions courtesy of CNN. Add to that a decade of high profile ass-whupping propaganda films such as Rambo, the Chuck Norris Missing in Action series and other sordid lesser movie franchises that re-fought the Vietnam war and the seeds had been planted, the bitter taste of defeat washed from our mouths.

Then of course came the granddaddy of them all, the lynchpin upon which the reset button could be hit on the entire society and justify an Orwellian future of never ending wars - 9/11. Before the bodies had even been pulled from the wreckage of the World Trade Center the Bush-Cheney junta was already plotting the new world order as exemplified by The Project For The New American Century or PNAC.  The alleged 'terrorist' attacks" (attacks pulled off with something like a super military style precision that would seem to be beyond that which a bunch of guys in caves could hope to pull off) would launch the expansion of the U.S. global empire. Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney played off of Junior Bush's Oedipal complex to goad him into invading Iraq to finish the old man's job. First though, there would have to be the strike against the land where the supposed 9/11 materminds had plotted the attacks from and were presiding over a network of terror camps (note the stock footage of the masked men and the monkey bars) from - Afghanistan. Never mind that Afghanistan is historically famous for having chewed up empires like the Brits and the Soviets, we Americans would never repeat the mistakes taught by history and get bogged down in a brutal and primitive quagmire. A quagmire that nearly ten years later would require the genius of the brilliant General Petraeus to save us from but more on that in a little while. With Afghanistan attacked first and the public's blood boiling after the 9/11 attacks, the USA PATRIOT Act rammed through Congress like shit through the proverbial goose and any influential road blocks being eliminated when the anthrax letters started being received by key members of the Democratic party Senate leadership and news anchors the game was on.

The ramping up of the apocalyptic rhetoric leading up to the attack on Iraq was like a loundening drumbeat of the tom tom's at some sort of bizarre island ritual where the natives get jacked up on some sort of magical hallucinogenic concoction and then go and slaughter animals as tribute to their gods. In our case, here in the new American HOMELAND our god was and always has been war. The entire country went through some sort of strange and inexplicable phase of indoctrination by propaganda and intimidation by the now common denunciations of "traitor", "unpatriotic" and "terrorist sympathizer" to tamp down the opposition to phase two of the American conquest of the Middle East and Eurasia. When the deal was done, Colin Powell's lies at the United Nations enshrined as truth and Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction ready to be loosed upon our preciously innocent American children while they slumbered in their comfortable beds the order was given and the Baghdad lit up like the Fourth of July with a sustained Shock And Awe display of  U.S. taxpayer dollars. And of course it was all on television....and the lemmings ate it up as usual.

Fast forward to early 2011, Iraq has largely  been relegated to the memory hole with much thanks to the miraculous SURGE. George W. Bush's wars have become Barack Obama's wars and the situation in Afghanistan, while predictably forgotten by most Americans and erased from the corporate media in favor of the latest Charlie Sheen update is continuing to deteriorate. This even after King David Petraeus found himself plucked from his posh post at CENTCOM in Tampa and sent off to work his magic in the land where empires go do die. When Rolling Stone published an article that portrayed General Stanley McChrystal, the four star clown then running the Afghan circus in a very nasty light of insubordination and disrespect it was the final straw for even the jelly-spined Obama who summoned him to Washington and 'accepted his retirement'. The article, The Runaway General was written by Michael Hastings who won the coveted Polk Award for his efforts. King David's War is his followup and can't have made the great man Petraeus very happy, unconfirmed anonymous reports allege that the puckering of his asshole could be heard all the way from Kandahar. The piece brilliantly lays out the levels to which Petraeus will plumb in order to cynically ensure that his media polished halo continue to glow. The great general, acting on behalf of Boobus Americanus to preserve our precious way of life cajoles, bribes, threatens, grandstands and allies himself with bloodthirsty, illiterate murderous, drug trafficking thugs like Col. Abdul Razzik to keep the war effort going. If the U.S. is relying on a guy Razzik, a real nasty piece of work by anyone's standards to 'win' the war then it is further evidence of the damnation of America's soul. Not that it troubles King David, who the Hastings piece brilliantly sums up in this statement:

A better nickname for Petraeus might be the Godfather: He is relying on a network of warlords and drug runners that he himself once called a "criminal syndicate".

I suppose that Petraeus, like Colonel Kurtz was winning the war 'his way', and another Hastings piece that is actually succeeding in finally putting a weed up the asses of the right people, again for Rolling Stone and entitled Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators may be the one that seals the deal for Petraeus. Of course the general with a true idea on the value of propaganda, P.R. and other little white lies, half-truths and prevarications has ordered an investigation, it will predictably be about as credible as Tony Soprano and Silvio Dante doing an internal audit of the Bada Bing Club blooks. Could it be that General Petraeus is about to reap the whirlwind of his own bullshit? With the Rolling Stone articles pissing on his presidential parade after it was already seriously damaged by Obama's exile of Petraeus to Afghanistan. The King David piece speaks of tensions between Gen P. and Obama who allegedly felt had been bent over (what a surprise) and butt-fucked by the Pentagon and it's agents in escalating the conflict which according to unnamed sources were becoming increasingly wary about a potential Petraeus 2012 bid and were seeing him "..as a general on his white horse", according to an unnamed senior U.S. military official. With his medal bedrecked showboating for the media Petraeus would have been a big hit with the right-wingers who are now desperately in search of a new champion since the political career of Sarah Palin went down in a blaze of idiocy, violent rhetoric and the televised murder of animals that proved too much for even cable TV diehards to take. The GOP is now, at least being exposed as the pack of sleazy, opportunistic jackals primarily interested in wresting control of the lead position at the golden trough shorn of their most visible leader Palin. The glue that keeps the nutjobs, war freaks, Raptureheads, nationalists, Birthers and brokedick peckerwood Jesus freak base together has been a charismatic cult leader and let's face it, Newt Gingrich is not that man (the Birchers HATE him) and Michelle Bachmann is just a more deranged version of Palin and an embarassment. The exposure of Petraeus as a pathological and cynical con artist is a devastating blow to the Republican party as a whole and to the rest of America in that it practically ensures a second term of Obama's Bush Lite.

Hasting's first article displays the arrogance of King David when he is quoted as telling his spokesman that the White House was "fucking with the wrong guy". Then came the McChrystal debacle and the assignment of Petraeus to what might as well have been the Aleutians. When Obama summoned the recalcitrant Stanley McChrystal back to D.C. and then in an unexpected whirlwind turn of events accepted his "resignation" it sent shockwaves through the administration's war council. So sudden had the shitcanning been and so contrary to the positive lobbying on his behalf despite his obvious disregard for civilian authority that the perpetually conniving Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bush appointee Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen were not expecting Obama's decision. Even more surprising was the annoitment of the great General Petraeus, his superior to replace him because as stated in the piece, "If Petraeus can't do it, the thinking went, then no one can - and no one back home could blame Obama for losing with Petraeus in charge." It was a political master stroke for Obama, at once hanging the war that the neocons and Petraeus had so long propagandized in favor of like a millstone around his neck and taking out his most potentially dangerous political opponent at once. It is one of those extremely rare instances when the mythical Obama as the cool and collected mastermind, like Michael Jordan just sizing up the opposition before systematically thrusting the dagger through their hearts and shredding the defense like so much Reagan surplus cheese actually can be seen and the O-Bots and apologists momentarily vindicated. Then of course Obama continues to do what he does best, cut deals with fascists, redistribute wealth upwards to his Wall Street  benefactors, screw the poor and push through increasingly obscene violations of civil liberties that Bush never could have dreamed of getting away with.

Now that Petraeus, up to his ass in alligators in the Afghan swamp and resorting to cutting deals with thugs and murderers like Razzik as well as turning a blind eye on the drug trade is desperate, he is a four star rat on a treadmill and history is cranking up the speed. So despearate is Petraeus now that his subordinates are unbelievably running psy ops campaigns on Senators, not that this isn't routine procedure but that it is felt that blood thirsty death junkies like John McCain and Joe Lieberman have to actually be conned into supporting more murder in the name of the almighty American empire. The wheels are coming off now, Petraeus's talking points are sounding more like those of Karl Rove or Frank Luntz by the day, the latest and most bizarre being that Afghan parents are burning their own kids to make the U.S. look bad. There are rumors circulating that the great general is about to quit his Afghanistan command and the collateral damage of the civilian body count exploding thanks to the Petraeus COIN method which is being exposed as a sham are indicative of a desperate and cunning charlatan working frantically to save his rapidly diminishing political future. I suppose that he could always slink back to Der Homeland in shame and become a cause celebre and hero to uber fascist right-wing degenerates, much like Douglas MacArthur after he was shitcanned by President Harry Truman in Korea for his insubordination. MacArthur in his time may have also believed that "they are fucking with the wrong guy". It is actually quite fitting that Petraeus would be presiding over the long running Afghanistan clusterfuck which has no end in sight - after all, it's better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven.

Petraeus or no Petraeus, the wars will continue because as obedient little historical revisionist flag-suckers we Americans have the slaughter of brown-skinned, non-Christians for our national glory in our blood. From the day that a child exits the womb the indoctrination of American exceptionalism, we are the good guys and the heinous lie that they ALL hate us for our way of life and therefore must be annihilated to preserve freedom and democracy ensures that the wars will never end. This very morning Obama and the establisment are in the process of plotting another foreign adventure  in Libya (their bankers must be getting nervous), this latest use of raw force will be justified under the left cover of a humanitarian intervention, the sort of hogwash that was peddled to the useful idiots to justify escalation in Afghanistan because of the brutality towards women. Time Magazine featured the war porn of a noseless Afghan woman on the cover to pimp the war to the butterflies, moonbeams, zebras and fairy tales liberals who never met a war that couldn't be justified under such phony pretenses of protecting human rights. The neocon mighty wurlitzer propaganda machine is already churning as well with the ludicrous claims that the financial collapse was all the fault of those damned dirty Ay-rabs, this Washington Times post has the title: Financial Terrorism Suspected in 2008 Economic Crash, credited to another of those evil little reports that are assembled in Pentagon propaganda chop shops. The headline does have one thing right though, the crash was the result of financial terrorism only the terrorists weren't wearing turbans and red headbands, rather they were wearing thousand dollar suits and floating off of the coast of the Hamptons in yachts while their derivatives exploded like the financial weapons of mass destruction that they were. War and lies and credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations and tainted, buffoon presidential candidates like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich are proof that you can sell anything in America. As Mencken once famously remarked, "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public" or something along those lines. Welcome to Chumpland and stock up on canned goods because the real financial terrorists of Wall Street are bidding up commodities (especially oil) and whiling away their time before unleashing their latest mass casualty attack on America, a Roman orgy of gross speculation: C.M.B.S. 2.0.

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.


A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. [Please note these are 1935 U.S. dollars. To adjust for inflation, multiply all figures X 10 or more]

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

- General Smedley D. Butler

Just my two cents

EE

Andrew Rice and Wired's Sleazy Yellow Journalism

“Truth is generally the best vindication against slander”


-Abraham Lincoln



As I have done a good bit of writing on the Danny Casolaro ‘suicide', the Octopus Murders and the PROMIS software story I was encouraged when earlier this week I was sent a link to a major piece that Wired did on the topic. Being that Wired was the source of the excellent article from back in 1993 entitled The INSLAW Octopus I was expecting a breakthrough in a renewed interest in this ugly story that reached into the highest levels of the Reagan government. Jesus Christ, was I disappointed. The article which is entitled The Octopus Conspiracy: One Woman's Search for Her Father's Killer by an ambitions sleazeball hack named Andrew Rice (his first piece for Wired) was not as much a serious piece of journalism but a diabolical and shameful character assassination on Rachel Begley whose father, Ralph Borger was one of the three people murdered on the Cabazon Indian Reservation in 1981. It is an old story that has in the past years been resurrected thanks to the excellent work of investigative journalist Nathan Baca whose Emmy Award winning series for California TV station KESQ "The Octopus Murders" led to a reexamination of a nearly three decades old triple execution. The cold case murdere of Fred Alvarez, Ralph Borger and Patty Castro were at the center of a shady conclave of black ops specialists, organized crime figures, intelligence community assets and the clandestine operations taking place on sovereign Indian land in order to avoid government oversight. Baca, who has now moved onto a gig with a larger audience in Las Vegas and his series was instrumental in the arrest of Jimmy Hughes, an admitted former hitman now running a ministry in Honduras. At the time of the senselessly brutal triple slayings, Hughes was running security at the reservation casino at the time and in a 1985 television interview admitted that the murders were“an authorized, government backed covert action". Hughes also admitted as much when secretly filmed by Begley during a 2008 confrontation at a Fresno, California convention where Hughes was speaking.

Despite a somewhat benign opening it is obvious that the true intent of the Wired piece is to undermine the credibility of Rachel Begley and therefore make her radioactive to any serious mainstream writers as well as to discredit her case against Jimmy Hughes to discourage any future legal action. Really, it always works this way when one of the little people doesn't just do the obedient thing and shut the hell up about matters of great criminality and systemic corruption. Wired's intent is blatant, given the already ugly blight on the mag's reputation for Wired's role in the setup of Private Bradley Manning over the Wikileaks story and his subsequent imprisonment and torture by the U.S. government. When a so-called reputable media outlet like Wired crossed the line from reportage into propadandizing and acting as a de facto arm of the National Security State in participating in manipulation and entrapment as in the Manning case it ceases to be any more of a reputable source than many of the websites and blogs that Rice will go on to condemn in his attack piece. After the beginning we get to the meat, and therefore true intent of the article. It begins with Andy Rice’s insensitive and callous treatment of Begley is disgraceful, describing her dead father as “a bearded mechanic who liked to drink, smoke pot and ride motorcycles”, plays into the most trite and tired of stereotypes to somehow discredit the man, and his abysmal lack of knowledge about the subject is fully befitting of a corporate media toady. That Rice exploits Begley's crusade to investigate and bring the killer of her father to justice right off the bat by insulting the dead man is an indication of the descent into the sewer that follows.


Andrew Rice, at least from the picture on his bio page appears to be a run of the mill smarmy little yuppie prick. He proudly lists at the end of his article, in addition to his email address (andrewrice75@yahoo.com) that he is the author of a book entitled The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget. Jesus, now THAT is one goddamned stupid title; I’ll bet that motherfucker’s just flying off the shelves and rocketing up the best seller lists with an interest grabber like that. It more fittingly sounds like some sort of cheesy discount dentistry ad that comes in the weekly ValPak pouch in the junk mail along with all the other shit. The Rice book, from the reviews that I read seems to be some sort of examination of the psyches of the victims of Ugandan atrocities, there seems to be a bit of a disconnect that one who is capable of writing compassionately about the human costs of a such tragedy could then be so cruel and dishonest to also produce the rank and vile Wired hit piece. Perhaps Andrew Rice is just another cynical corpse-fucker, peddling bleeding heart drivel to weepy liberal types while calculatingly using such work as nothing more than a springboard. After reading the Wired piece I tend to believe the latter so Andy, why don’t you just go back to Uganda and use your own smiling teeth to chew on the naugahyde tough skin on the ass of Idi Amin’s corpse?


Now Before I get into any sort of serious commentary I would like to present some of Rice’s more ugly lies and smears of this relentlessly remorseless character assassination of Rachel Begley. I am pretty certain that Andrew Rice falsely presented himself as a man of integrity and honor in order to get cooperation to write his article which is a complete bunch of crap, with that in mind the ugliness of this stuff only further embellishes Rice as nothing more than a malicious scoundrel and another corporate media mockingbird.

After the murders, Begley went through a rebellious phase and fell in with a bad crowd. By the time she was 15, she was pregnant and had dropped out of high school. Eventually she got her GED and moved to Iowa. She says she would periodically wonder about the case and check in with the police, who never seemed to have any new information. Beyond that, she didn’t have time or tools to delve too deeply.

Setting the table for the onslaught Rice begins his mugging by painting Rachel Begley as an under-aged, pregnant high school dropout who ran with the wrong crowd and horror of horrors got her GED rather than a pass into a drone mill like Georgetown. According to his bio the author graduated from the prestigious Georgetown University. I strongly suspect that like so with many with a privileged and pampered background quite obviously sees people who are struggling economically and have had a rough time in a life where the deck is stacked against critical thinkers and those without the clout brought by schmoozing with the right people in the phony ritual formerly known as “networking” as nothing more than lower life forms and human rubbish.

Her work, she says, has placed her own life in danger and made her a target of the same forces that killed her father. And yet she cannot stop. She keeps following the siren song of the conspiracy theory, the same beguiling cognitive path that lures others to the JFK assassination and Area 51. What was once a family tragedy has blossomed into something else entirely, a vast puzzle whose solution promises to illuminate not only her father’s death but the dark forces behind the world’s apparent chaos

Here we go with the old "siren song of conspiracy theory” canard, this is the bread and butter of the winged monkeys and their establishment benefactors in that only the OFFICIAL conspiracy theories are allowed. Official conspiracy theories like the Warren Commission whitewash of the Kennedy Assassination and the Kean Commission coverup report on the ‘terrorist’ attacks of September 11, 2001 that was such a mockery largely through ommission that it didn’t even see fit to mention the collapse of the 47 story WTC7, the U.S. Special Operations Command program Able Danger or the now heavily censored testimony of Turkish FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. There was no recording of the questioning of George W. Bush or Dick Cheney under oath and severe restrictions were placed on the review of documents. That the Kean Commission was originally to have been chaired by Henry Kissinger and that the Warren Commission included not only hated Kennedy nemesis Alan Dulles but also coverup artists Gerald Ford and Arlen Specter (the magic bullet) is supposed to be above questioning. Rice also begins his linkage with UFOs with the inclusion of Area 51, he will continue down this path as he paints his libelous picture. The UFO association is a slam bang proven technique to induce mockery and discredit those dangerous to the establishment. Note that Democrat Dennis Kucinich was neutralized during the 2008 presidential debates when he was baited into answering a UFO question.

Begley lives and works in a rickety house at the end of a gravel road, next to a small pond and a rotting wood barn in a rural town outside Louisville, Kentucky, that she doesn’t want named for security reasons. Out front, her “guard dog,” an aging flat-coated retriever named Lucky, lazes beneath her porch. Begley is 43 and heavyset, with piercing blue eyes. On this day, her air conditioner is broken, and her round face glistens with sweat. She has four children, and for the moment she is collecting unemployment and selling a line of weight-loss shakes to make money on the side.



and -


At the time, Begley was working in customer service for an Internet service provider, which was moving its back-office operations to another state, and she was spending her days sitting idly at her computer, waiting to get laid off. Begley had once worked for a collections agency, and she knew how to track people down. “I went into it with a mindset, I guess, almost like a police officer would,” she says.

Now this is the money paragraph for Andy Rice. Now not only does he arrogantly describe the condition of the rural Kentucky home of Rachel Begley in the mocking tone of Big Apple holier than thou snobbery but he goes on to describe her appearance in very nasty and immature terms, more befitting to a middle-school playground than in a 'reputable' publication. He refers to her as "heavyset" with "her round face glistening with sweat" or translated into layman's terms - her story is bullshit because she is FAT. The picture of Begley in the piece is certainly not flattering as it only emphasizes that she is a large figured woman. Now, let's be honest here because Christ certainly knows that being FAT is one very serious taboo in our glorious culture of media fantasy, glitzy models and the wonderful lives that the beautiful people on our televisions live. Such is the American mindset that such superficial horseshit carries the clout that it does, it is more indicative of a diseased and debauched society gone to seed and systematically dumbed down than anything but he taps directly into this like a veteran propagndist. Rice also sneeringly refers to Begley’s former job working in customer service for an Internet service provider with the sort of deeply ingrained loathing that social climbing little pricks like him have for ordinary working Americans. Not to mischaracterize you Andy, and this may be a bit presumptous on my part, but in looking at the picture on your profile page you just come across as a smug and conniving little asshole to me, a real four-flushing douchebag with a tongue like a whip and a backbone made of jelly but at least you aren't FAT.

Finally he viciously runs her down as an unemployed mother of four on the government dole, you see, being down on your luck and jobless in the economically eviscerted Homeland it is only the rich that can be propped up by the government. Somehow I doubt that Mr. Rice has any sort of angry words for the wealthy tax chiselers, corporate cheats and other sucklers on the upper class end of the handout line. Also note the dirty little bastard's reference to selling weight-loss products on the side to further run Begley down. I don’t know if Rice has ever heard of the DeVos family but they made billions of dollars selling similar products and not only own professional sports teams, huge real estate portfolios and the sort of serious political clout reserved for the ultra-rich here in our rotting empire but they also have their very own mercenary army courtesy of DeVos family member Erik Prince and Blackwater (now Xe thanks to too much bad PR due to murdering civilians in Iraq). But they aren't FAT now are they? Rice also mocks the little inspirational prayer that Begley has near her computer about being protected from "evil spirits who prowl about the world". Not to break the author's little bubble or throw water on the bonfire of Wired's burning at the stake of Rachel Begley but doesn't the entire fucking religion of Christianity sort of operate along that rationale?

As Begley plunged into the world of the conspiracy theorists, she found more than facts and assertions—she found a community with its own rules, ethics, and currency. And it was a difficult one to penetrate; the cluster of people devoted to studying the Octopus tended not to throw their arms open to newcomers. Over the years, they had built a kind of gnostic society, a belief system that was both all-encompassing—a grand unified theory of everything sinister—and exclusionary, open only to the select few who could accept the devastating truth. They were suspicious of outsiders and divided into factions that warred over arcane points, often accusing one another of being double agents.

Again, there is the reference to the dreaded pejorative “conspiracy theorists” (also see "tin foil hatters", only a deliberate idiot, or an intellectually lazy mental masturbator or a payrolled protector of the criminal elite benefits from throwing this one around. A better term would be “conspiracy researcher” or “geopolitical analyst” or “investigative reporter”, the very definition of “conspiracy” at least according to the Meriam-Webster dictionary is:


Definition of CONSPIRACY


1: the act of conspiring together


2a : an agreement among conspirators


b : a group of conspirators


Not that THIS would ever happen in daily life. I mean who on our great star-spangled lemming farm that is America would ever be silly enough to believe that people would engage in any sort of scheming and conniving while conducting ordinary daily commerce, engaging in infidelity and conspiring to keep it secret or anything other than being completely honest in the true apple pie loving way. As for political assassination “conspiracy theories” you would think that someone with a culturally valuable Georgetown education might have at some point in school heard about the assassination of Julius Caesar. Maybe Andy Rice spent more time smoking dope than attending history classes.

There were many competing interpretations of the Octopus—Seymour was particularly interested in the alleged role of entertainment company MCA—and they were infinitely adaptable, able to accommodate the Patriot Act or the financial crisis. Devotees found and fought one another on sites like Above Top Secret, conspiracy clearinghouses that host every conceivable thread of discussion. Begley forged an alliance with a retired FBI agent who was exploring a link between the Octopus and Satanic cults. She did battle with a prominent UFO enthusiast who thought the Octopus was hiding the government’s collaboration with a colonizing alien force. (In January, online sleuths discovered that alleged Arizona assassin Jared Lee Loughner was a regular poster on Above Top Secret, but his bizarre ramblings about currency and space travel, widely disdained by other contributors, never touched on the Octopus threads.) Begley also developed a venomous rivalry with Virginia McCullough, a California writer who accused her of being an enemy impostor, not really Ralph Boger’s daughter. When Begley posted a copy of her birth certificate online, McCullough called it “a cut-and-paste job.”


“I do not believe that Desertfae is a ‘victim,’ and she has not posted any information that she is who she claims to be,” McCullough wrote on one message board. “She is a low-stage puppet reporting to the puppet master and two or three of his minions.”

Now, this paragraph is my absolutely favorite one in the entire sordid piece. Andy Rice emphatically mentions the website Above Top Secret which any conspiracy researcher with any credibility avoids like the bubonic plague as it is so full of disinformation, real nutcases, government sanctioned operatives, hopheads, seriously deranged paranoids and completely unfiltered craziness that is so unreadable that it is laughable. Personally, I view it as a vacuum cleaner operation set up to sow disinformation, I would reference Obama administration figure Cass Sunstein’s theory on how to cognitively infiltrate and break up serious research groups through use of plants and agent provocateurs, I doubt that Rice knows very much at all about COINTELPRO (God knows if they don't teach the assassination of Julius Caesar at fucking Georgtown why would they bother with that?) or any of the other historically documented government efforts to discredit or otherwise silence those who ask the inconvenient questions of power.


The truth is that Andy Rice invokes this website largely for the reason of making a bizarre, ludicrous and libelous linkage between  Rachel Begley and that murderous little fiend Jared Loughner whose recent Arizona killing spree shocked the nation. Hey Andy, why don’t you explain just what the fuck that Jared (Lee) Loughner has to do with the price of rice in China regarding anything that you are supposedly writing about in this piece? Regarding the “bizarre ramblings” about currency if you would bother to pull your head out of your pampered asshole and take a look around – a REAL look around you will find that we are currently in the midst of a global economic crisis largely generated by the manipulation of currency, rampant commodities speculation and a Federal Reserve system that exists only to serve the needs of degenerate Wall Street gamblers. If you are going to indict that little fruitbag Loughner for his views on the grand scale financial scam that is “free market” capitalism then you indict millions more who are catching on to this long-running systemic fraud. I don't know if you are aware of it but one of the most consistently vocal critics of the Federal Reserve, Texas Representative and former presidential candidate Ron Paul is now Chairman of the Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee and holding legitimate hearings on monetary policy abuse in his official capacity right now. Of course any mention of THAT inconvenient fact would kind of undermine your entire bullshit guilt by association between Begley and Loughner now wouldn't it?  Hey Andy, a guy named Hosni Mubarak was just brought down due to the reverberations of currency speculation and spiraling food costs, you might want to note that when the shit was really starting to hit the fan in Cairo a few weeks back that the person sent to talk to our former Egyptian puppet dictator wasn’t from the State Department but was a guy named Frank G. Wisner, the voice of the real power in this country and the son of infamous Wall Steet power broker and OSS/CIA uberspook Frank Wisner. Now Andy, I hate to come across as being it a know it all but it is increasingly apparent that you don't know jack shit about fucking anything! Oh and Andy... Frank Wisner Sr. had a little pet project over at CIA, it was called Operation Mockingbird, I damn sure know that you aren't familiar with this because to quote the late great muckraker Upton Sinclair who once famously stated: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"


But I digress...


Andy Rice continues with Loughner’s obsession with “space travel” without bothering to mention that millions of other Americans who don’t go on a kill crazy rampage are also obsessed with space travel (see Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and thousands of other sci-fi franchises), why not call out the Trekkies as dangerous cultists as well? There is also the reference to a “retired FBI agent who was exploring a link between the Octopus and Satanic cults”. This would be a certain Ted Gunderson, a man whose work is as prolific as it is often totally batshit but Rice lacks the guts to even mention Gunderson by name lest anyone actually go and look at his work. Though far too much of it is questionable and to be charitable, pretty far out there into the REAL tin-foil hatter stuff there are a few small tidbits of worthwhile information there. Things like the Franklin Credit Uinion scandal where a once prominent black and up and coming Republican named Lawrence King, who sang the national anthem at the 1988 GOP Convention before allegations emerged (and a cover-up operation flew into action) that King was running an underage prostitution ring for the D.C elite and that some of the poor abused kids were given White House tours. This alas is a seriously ugly story far worse than anything that Rachel Begley was investigating so I will leave it for another time. And as far as the satanism goes, there have long been dark stories of satanism and mind control within army and intelligence spheres of influence, this too will have to wait for another time as it is nauseating enough to deal with Andy Rice's torrent of bile. Rice also has an odd double standard in calling out serious researchers like Begley as basically loony tunes while then lavishing his implied approval on longtime conspiracy maven and batshit crazy gatekeeper Virginia McCullough. He treats her as though she is the Alien queen whose eggs by nature of her preferential place in the establishment food chain all are pre-approved for entry into the lucky sperm club.


Rice then goes on to take on the Jimmy Hughes travesty of justice, of course he is sympathetic to the poor minister victimized by the FAT crazy lady. Not to go into much of this other than the bullshit double standards pimped by Rice but he implies that Hughes is a retired and reformed man, just wanting to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, our lord and savior. This despite the fact that Hughes openly admits his past criminality as a part of his Elmer Gantry schtick, and that the group that sponsors him ministry, The Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International or FGBMFI is a  haven for hard core right-wing fascists and has long served as a front for U.S. imperialist oppression in Latin America. Jimmy Hughes himself was allegedly involved in helping to plot the 2009 Honduran coup d'etat against president Manuel Zelaya who had to be deposed for being an ally of Venezuala’s Hugo Chavez. So much for that retired and reformed horseshit. Then just to get in yet another nasty dig at Rachel Begley, Rice mocks her for justifiable celebrating the Hughes arrest:


Begley posted a celebratory video, scored to Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida.” It flashed up an image of Hughes’ mug shot, across which she had scrawled: “Gotcha.”

Now here, I can’t completely disagree that it was a bit of a silly thing for her to do. Me, were the man involved in the long unsolved murder of my father finally arrested, I would have rapidly Photoshopped a picture of Hughes’ fucking fat, ugly, burr-cut head sawed off, dripping blood and mounted on a pike while playing The Battle Hymn of the Republic in the background. In addition to being a completely servile ass-kisser, Rice seems to have a particular fondness for “The Minister” that would belie the reality that Hughes is a stone-cold, old school killer.Lastly, Rice lovingly describes Michael Murphy, the prosecutor who may or may not have commited an act of obstruction of justice in dropping the charges against Hughes as "dapper", for some reason that just conjures up visions of Rice with Murphy's cock deeply embedded in his mouth. Jesus fucking Christ, even reading this nonstop eruption of shitty sleaze is just making me feel dirty about everything, I think that I am just going to feed the whole rotten article into the shredder after I wrap this up.

I suppose that the Wired hit piece is just the requisite thirty pieces of silver that it takes to get a big time gig these days. In these ugly economic times one can hardly blame a careerist like Rice for coveting a cushy and well paid regular gig at Condé Nast. After all, Matt Taibbi who writes for Rolling Stone and has done by far some of the best writing on the ruinous greed of Wall Street criminals (especially Goldman Sachs) once wrote an article entitled “God Can Suck My Dick” and earned the condemnation of Hillary Clinton and others for his mocking piece on the death of the Pope, either of which would normally make one radioactive to the mainstream media. Tiabbi, a witty writer and personable guy disemboweled the 9/11 Truth Movement in a series of masterful pieces that hit all the right pejorative notes “conspiracy theorists” etc while completely ignoring any of the serious researchers of our American Reichstag Fire. Now Taibbi writes books, articles and when I was watching it, he even had a regular gig on another left gatekeeper, Bill Maher’s HBO show. Maher was booted off of television entirely in the ugliness post 9/11 when he dared to say that the alleged hijackers weren’t cowards for their kamizee runs into buildings but rather that the real cowards were the ones launching cruise missiles from thousands of miles away. Maher of course redeemed himself for his mockery of any who questioned the official government conspiracy theory on 9/11 and at one point wading into the audience to point out members of the activist group We Are Change to the police after they engaged in a bit of guerilla theatre. Now Maher is making millions and bragging about smoking dope and banging porn stars, Andy Rice could only dream over a gig like that but Maher had more name recogniton than a suckling bottom feeder like Rice. Not that Andrew Rice gives a rat’s ass about the truth but the story of the Octopus is one that would provide a decent and honorable writer enough material to build a career as a very serious investigative journalist. Instead, he resorts to the dismissive idiocy that those with either a vested interest in the existing system or the need to enshroud themselves in a deflective cocoon of denial that there really ARE very bad people running the system.



Hey, I love Taibbi’s work, but rest assured, Andrew Rice is NO Matt Taibbi but real journalism isn’t about placating power, cutting deals and engaging in character assassinations that serve the needs of the oligarchy. I recall when there was a national outpouring of grief over the premature death of celebrity host Tim Russert, a reputed journalist of great honor. Bob Woodward of Watergate fame churns out books on a regular basis thanks to his favorable status within the D.C. elite inner circles that provide him access. A real investigative journalist, a serious muckraker, draws nothing but contempt from the establishment, is scorned and mocked as a nuisance and a “conspiracy theorist” by elitist snobs in the pocket media and in some cases, if his work is really good he ends up dead in a bathtub in a lonely hotel room with his wrists slashed to the bone like “fringe freelance journalist” Danny Casolaro.


Real investigative journalism doesn’t pay, better to become a dreck peddler, secure a nice regular paycheck from Condé Nast and take a place as just another low level water carrier to ensure that the firewall between the real ugly shit that is the truth from ever being discovered by the smelly masses. In his savage destruction of poor Rachel Begley. It was when Rice mocked her as a former “customer service” worker with condescension and elitism just dripping from his poison pen it was just more evidence that there are two Americas, one for the connected and the other for the poor and fucked over schmucks. It is this complete contempt by those who control the American system and have systematically eradicated the middle class, destroyed the public education system and poisoned the minds of the young with televised sexual perversion, dumbness and thousands of simulated murders passed off as entertainment that has brought this country low. The old war criminal Henry Kissinger and Rockefeller Family operative once famously referred to the little people as nothing more than “useless eaters”. Pity that guys like Andy Rice and his ilk, despite their willingness to lie and engage in ugly character assassinations just don’t get it that the same elite holds them in just as much contempt, it’s only that they are pliant and useful idiots.


Maybe the Rachel Begley takedown will vault Andy Rice onto the varsity team where he can participate with other politically motivated Wired hacks in jacking off Adrian Lamo and engaging in a vendetta against blogger Glenn Greenwald who called them out for their bullshit. I doubt it though, Rice is a punk and bereft of any courage when it comes to engaging anyone with an established reputation. After his filthy piece of crap attack on Begley he has zero credibility as well.


Rachel Begley should just sue this lying little cocksucker.I sure as hell would.
 
Just my two cents
 
EE